In the current “Wifo Competitiveness Radar”, Austria performs comparatively well in terms of per capita income, regional distribution and foreign trade – but when it comes to full-time employment and the employment of women, Austria is only in the middle field. Wifo defines “competitiveness” as the ability to “secure high real incomes and continuously improve social and ecological living conditions in a European comparison”. This has recently improved by a total of 1.9 percentage points to a percentage rank of 64.4. The percentile rank is the proportion of all countries with the same or less favorable values than Austria.
Austria performed best with a mean percentile rank of 77.2 in the dimension “real income, productivity and regional distribution”. The decisive factor was the strong economic growth in 2022. In the “international trade” dimension, Austria was able to improve by 2.1 points to a percentile rank of 70.6. The main reason for this was the recovery in tourism.
Use of natural resources improved
Austria has also improved in the “use of natural resources” (+3.2 points, percentile rank 67.5). There were position gains primarily in environmental patents and energy dependence, and losses in CO2 intensity.
With a mean percentile rank of 49.6, Austria was still only in the European midfield in the dimensions of “labor market and social living conditions” and once once more deteriorated compared to the previous year. Measured by the employment rate in full-time equivalents, Austria is only in 23rd place among the 30 comparison countries with a percentage rank of 26.7 (2022).
Big difference in employment rates between men and women
What is striking is the large difference between men and women in the employment rate. In 2022, the employment rate of prime-age women adjusted for working hours was 20.3 percentage points lower than that of men. The difference was only greater in the Czech Republic, Italy, Greece and Switzerland. In contrast, the gender gap was significantly smaller in the Scandinavian countries, but also in most countries in East Central Europe.
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